"All right," said the officer. "_Jump him!_" Trehearne sprang for the darkness. He saw the three men in front of him melt away. The rifle cracked and flared, not aimed at anyone just yet, a warning. And then the night was full of motion. Lying on the black rock, on the iron ridges of frozen air that flowed between, Trehearne watched the clumsy dance of men in shapeless pressure suits and round blank helmets, in and out of the sharp bright beam that was empty now except for themselves. They had moved around Kerrel in the blackness and the silence and come upon him from the back, but their hands were hampered by the gauntlets and the bulging fabric of Kerrel's suit was hard to hold. They lost him, and then he was part of the group again and they did not know which one, and their voices rose in an angry babble. Only Kerrel did not speak. Trehearne crept on his belly, farther away from the beam, and the shadows that were Quorn and Edri followed him. Suddenly Edri tapped his helmet, and then pointed, and Trehearne saw the solitary figure of a man walking in the darkness outside the beam, but from this angle showing black against it, toward the place where the prisoners had been. Trehearne said aloud, "This is Trehearne speaking. He's coming our way, to your right and just outside the beam." The men began to run, spreading out. And then the shock-rifle flared and flared again, steady, systematic, raking all the ground where the prisoners should be, the blue bolts cracking in the helmet phones like heavy static. Trehearne and the others fled farther away, floundering over the bitter ground, and the blue bolts haunted them, and then two men flung themselves at Kerrel from behind. He fell, dropping the rifle. The two men got up after a moment, rather slowly. Someone came with a belt lamp, and then others, and then all of them, with Trehearne and Quorn and Edri. They all stood looking down at the figure that still lay where it had fallen and did not move. There was a ridge of rock with sharp teeth edging it, sticking up from the frozen air. "He hit hard," said one of the men, "right on his face-plate, and it broke." The officer swore, viciously. "What a stinking mess! Why did he have to do it? He must have been crazy." "I don't know," Trehearne said slowly. "Where do you draw the line between lunacy and belief? If there'd been more like him, we couldn't have done what we did." They picked Kerrel up and carried him to the cruiser, and Trehearne plodded on where he was told. Inside the ship he and the others were stripped of their pressure suits and searched again for weapons. Then guards took them down a corridor, tired bitter men who had been too long on a grinding job. One of them said, "We overhauled the _Mirzim_. All your friends are here." And then he added, "It's a pity that we have to save the lives of men like you."